Hanna Camping Trip 2018

My sister and her husband have a really nice trailer and, just like last year, they took it up to a campground in Hanna (where my brother-in-law went camping when he was a kid) and they plan to leave it there for the month of July so that they and their friends and family can use it.  Like last year I availed myself of this opportunity for a little camping trip this week.  It was absolutely wonderful to be up in the mountains with the small of pine and the fresh air.  After being there for only a few minutes I felt so relaxed (just driving through Wolf Creek Pass, which was beautiful, rejuvenated me).  I love being in the great outdoors and, while you might think that being up there alone would be scary, I loved the solitude.  It was so quiet and peaceful.  Every morning I would wake up as soon as it got light and wander around, usually to the river, then I would spend the afternoon reading (I finished two books), and in the evening I would build a great big fire and make s'mores.  I loved being able to see all of the stars and I loved listening to the rain as I fell asleep!  It was perfect and I was a little sad to leave (but not too sad because I have a ticket to Phantom of the Opera!).

I'm hoping to be able to go up again later in the month.

Ant-Man and the Wasp

I had the chance to see Ant-Man and the Wasp at a Thursday preview in an IMAX theater with a large and boisterous crowd and it was so much fun!  I absolutely loved Ant-Man (much more than I expected) so I have been looking forward to this for a long time.  In the aftermath of the events in Captain America: Civil War, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) is under house arrest until he is once again drawn into the activities of Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) who  believe that Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) is still alive.  Since Lang entered and returned from the quantum realm, where Janet has been lost for thirty years, Pym and Hope want his help to rescue her through a quantum bridge they have created.  However, a former colleague of Pym's, Bill Foster (Laurence Fishburne), wants this technology to help Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), the victim of a botched quantum experiment which has left her in an unstable state, and Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), a black market dealer, who wants the technology for its potential value.  Meanwhile, Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), an FBI agent, is chasing Lang for violating house arrest and Pym and Hope for their role in breaking the Sokovia Accords.  Lang and Hope become Ant-Man and the Wasp and they recruit Luis (Michael Pena) in order to elude everyone pursing them and to rescue Janet.  This movie doubles down on everything that made me love the first one!  Rudd is incredibly engaging, once again full of witty one-liners, and his interactions with Lilly are hilarious.  The action sequences are fantastic with objects becoming larger and smaller as needed.  My favorite sequence involves a giant Hello Kitty PEZ dispenser!  Finally, Michael Pena, once again, steals the show, especially in a truth serum fueled monologue that had me and everyone else in the theater laughing out loud!  I loved this movie!  It is the perfect summer blockbuster and I highly recommend it for a good time (especially after the devastation wrought in Infinity War).

Note:  It goes without saying that you should stay through the credits!  There is a mid-credits scene that links directly to Infinity War and a fun post-credits scene.

Summer Reading: To Capture What We Cannot Keep

The next selection on my summer reading list was To Capture What We Cannot Keep by Beatrice Colin. This is the type of book that I keep reading hoping that it will get better. It didn't. Caitriona Wallace is a recently widowed Scottish woman with limited financial means. She accepts a position as a chaperon to siblings Jamie and Alice Arrol on a European tour. While in Paris, she has a chance encounter with Emile Nouguier, an engineer working on the construction of the Eiffel Tower. She is dazzled by him but soon must return to Scotland with her charges. In despair she is about to enter a marriage of convenience with a wealthy man she does not love when she is suddenly given the opportunity to return to Paris as chaperon to the Arrols once again as Jamie, an aspiring engineer, has been given an internship to work on the Eiffel Tower. She is soon reunited with Emile and they embark on a forbidden romance. Gag! The pace of the narrative is so slow! It takes forever for Caitriona and Emile to get together!  When they finally do get together I didn't really buy into the conflict because the reasons why they can’t be together are preposterous.  I didn't understand Emile's hesitation. He comes from a wealthy family and worries about his mother's reaction but he has defied her at every turn, refusing to work in the family business to pursue building the tower. Why does her opinion suddenly matter? I also didn't understand the shocked reaction from his contemporaries because every other character's behavior is very Bohemian. Why the sudden judgement? Apparently Caitriona is too respectable for Emile to dally with (his fellow artists have no problem with his on-again off-again relationship with an opium addicted prostitute) but not respectable enough for his mother. Then she decides to break it off with him, despite the fact that he now realizes that he loves her, because she suddenly has a big secret (which has not been referenced before) and must leave him for his own good without telling him the reason. To me this is such lazy storytelling and it is the reason why I don't really like romantic comedies. If characters would only talk about their issues all of this heartbreak could be avoided but then again there wouldn't be any conflict. It is so contrived! Another weakness is that the narrative spends a great deal of time on the antics of Jamie and Alice Arrol and I found them to be incredibly unsympathetic. The two of them make one bad decision after another but there are no consequences for their behavior. Every issue is resolved rather conveniently, especially a subplot involving Alice (I think I rolled my eyes at this explanation). Finally, I was baffled by the epilogue. Years later, when Emile finds Caitriona again, they have this special moment but nothing is actually resolved. I suppose we are meant to think that they live happily ever after because they embrace dramatically. Ugh! I did really enjoy the details surrounding the building of the Eiffel Tower but these were not enough to overcome the uninspired story. Does anyone want my copy?

Note:  Have you read To Capture What We Cannot Keep?  What was your reaction?  I am definitely in the minority on this one.

Time for Three at the Waterfall

Last night my friend Angela and I had the opportunity to attend another outdoor concert, this time at the Waterfall Amphitheater at Thanksgiving Point.  It was another concert featuring the Utah Symphony with special guests Time for Three, a string trio made up of Ranaan Meyer, Charles Yang, and Nicolas Kendall.  I saw Time for Three several years ago at Red Butte Garden and I loved their performance so much that I knew I wanted to see them again.  All three of them are classically trained musicians but they come across more like rock stars.  They are known for their mash-ups of classical pieces with contemporary music and this concert was absolutely brilliant!  The Utah Symphony began with "The Star-Spangled Banner" and then Time for Three took the stage with a medley from Hamilton.  Obviously I absolutely loved that!  Then they played three pieces which were written specifically for them, "Vertigo," "Banjo Love," and "Darling Calypso." and I enjoyed all of them.  Then they played a mash-up of "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles and "Lacrymosa" from Mozart's Requiem.  This was absolutely amazing and I was pretty much overcome by it.  Before the intermission they did another mash-up, this time it was Saint-Saens' "Organ Symphony" with "Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve which I also really loved.  After the intermission they played yet another mash-up with "Sweet Child O Mine" by Guns N' Roses and selections from Kindertotenlieder by Gustav Mahler.  This was so lovely and atmospheric. They then played a beautiful rendition of "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen and concluded the concert with "Songs of Joy" which was an epic arrangement.  As an encore the orchestra played "Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Philip Sousa.  I enjoyed this concert so much.  The Waterfall Amphitheater is such a lovely venue with beautiful gardens all around and the temperature was just perfect for a concert with a slight breeze.  After the concert there was a fireworks show behind the waterfall which was quite festive and got me excited for the Fourth of July!  The perfect ending to a wonderful evening!

Mad Max: Fury Road (Black & Chrome Edition)

When I first saw Mad Max: Fury Road I was absolutely blown away by it!  The action is intense and unrelenting!  It is set in a post-apocalyptic future where overlords control the scarce resources.  One such overlord is Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who sends out a War Rig driven by Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) to search for gasoline.  When she veers off-course, Joe realizes that she has taken his five enslaved wives and so he leads his army of War Boys after her.  Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy), captured by Joe because he is a universal donor, accompanies the army because he is supplying blood to Nux (Nicholas Hoult), one of the War Boys.  After an epic battle in a sand storm, Max eventually joins Furiosa as they try to escape to the green space Furiosa remembers from her childhood.  I love this movie because it is ultimately about redemption and I think that Furiosa is one of the best female characters in film.  The action sequences are epic, made all the more amazing by the fact that most of them employed practical stunts rather than CGI.  Director George Miller has always asserted that he wanted to shoot this movie in black and white and that the black and white version is the best edition of the movie.  Due to its huge commercial success he was able to release the so-called Black & Chrome Edition on DVD and it was screened in theaters very briefly.  This really intrigued me because the colors are so vivid in the theatrical release but I was unable to see the Black & Chrome Edition when it was shown in SLC.  Luckily the Salt Lake Film Society screened it Friday night as part of their Summer Late Nights series and I finally got to see it!  It is awesome!  The black and white images serve to heighten the sense of desolation and they make Immortan Joe and the War Boys really stand out with their pale white skin which makes them even more terrifying.  I also loved the wind storm in black and white because it seems so surreal.  It was quite the experience seeing this on the big screen with a really rowdy crowd (some were dressed as War Boys) and I highly recommend it!  There is one more chance to see it today at noon at the Tower Theatre.  Go here for more information about the Summer Late Nights Series.